David Stern: The Caligula Commissioner

You can almost hear the sound of the violin playing right? David Stern has been the commissioner of the NBA for coming on two decades and we have seen some major changes to the NBA under his guidance. The shot clock has changed, the 3-point line has been pushed back, 6 different teams relocated and what I think is most notable: four different lockouts. That’s in an almost 30 year career. In the past 40 years, according to this Bleacher Report article there have been 16 lockouts with Stern accounting for a quarter of those. Stern has been embattled in some dangerous controversies for a man who has lasted almost 30 years dealing with some of the biggest egos, both in players and in owners (sup Mark Cuban) of any professional sport league on the planet. But it seems that recently David Stern has flown off the handle. Stern up to and including the lockout has done and said some pretty interesting things that seem hard to ignore.

It would seem, in typical megalomaniac fashion, that David Stern couldn’t let himself go when coming to how he interacts with players and coaches. Example, the incident with the Spurs this past November where coach Gregg Popovich didn’t bring some of his biggest stars to a game against the Heat. Stern assessed a $250,000 penalty to the Spurs for “a disservice to the league and the fans.” It seems just a touch unquantifiable but it also seems like Stern is more looking for the biggest story lines than for anything else in the long term. Which is a better story David? Tim Duncan getting blown out against Le-Bron-Bron in an overall meaningless regular season game or Timmy putting up his millionth double-double in game 1 of the semis? It’s that kind of short-sightedness that has begun to plague the end of Sterns tenure as commissioner, he’s looking at the TV ratings for last weeks games ignoring that the ratings in San Antonio are going to be massive whenever Duncan, Parker and Genobili make their final playoff run before either retiring or being broken up so the Spurs can get younger.

Now that there are serious, out in the open talks about the lowly Sacramento Kings being relocated to Seattle, Stern seems to have been oscillating on how he feels. As a general fan of one of the greatest franchise names and brands in NBA history, I really want to see the old green and gold of the Supersonics back in the NBA’s life but I think this is going to pose an interesting quandary for Stern. Stern was very public and very supportive of Clayton Bennett to move the Sonics from Seattle to Oklahoma City and seemed to do a lot to make it hard for anyone in Seattle to keep the Sonics where they were. Now there’s a move to resurrect the Sonics in the twilight of Stern’s career, it will be interesting to see how he does with this prospect. Does he let due-process take its course and see if the Seattle ownership group puts up a fair deal for a miserable franchise and see if they can’t turn it into a similar contender like OKC has become since making the move eastward? It seems to remain to be seen. I think that Stern, if things get chippy, in that if things start to move at a pace that Stern isn’t comfortable with I think there is going to be some famous Stern-isms that will either drive this deal into the ground or make it almost impossible for Seattle to achieve the level of success in the amount of time that the Thunder were able to achieve. Though it appears that Stern is giving Sacramento a fighting chance.

Speaking of relocation/expansion, did you know that Stern believes that there will be teams in Europe under the NBA banner? This is starting to sound like Newt Gingrich famously promising to put an American colony on the moon by the end of his SECOND term as president. Stern believes that the NBA could conquer Europe with his legionnaires of power forwards and marketable shoe deals. Yes, he does believe that this is two decades down the road but at the same time this sounds simply nuts. When you have players LeBron James campaigning for league CONTRACTION saying that there are too many teams as it is and Stern wants to put teams across the pond? Though the London Kings might make for some good comedy.

Lucy Nicholson/REUTERS/File

I think that we started to see the destruction of Stern’s sanity with the debacle involving Chris Paul and a potential move to the Lakers. Stern, who was technically the owner of the struggling New Orleans Hornets refused to let Chris Paul move from NOLA to the Lakers in a three-team trade that most analysts believed was a mutually beneficial trade for all teams involved. Leaving the whole concept of the commissioner as the technical owner of a franchise aside, this really showed what Stern is interested in. He was right, he wanted to make another team in the city of Los Angles into a good team and it worked to perfection when both the Clippers and the Lakers were in the playoffs keeping the Staples Center booked while the LA Kings (who did pretty well) scrambling for ice time. Though in the long retrospective, the move worked, it shows a serious flaw in Stern’s career, his inability to not meddle in the moves of the league. I get that he was looking out for the Hornets but the deal that was supposed to improve every team that Stern finally approved seemed to only benefit the Clippers. Who knows how the league would be if Chris Paul were in Lakers purple but I think that there is something to be said about the commissioner needs to let the league play itself out and not look at how he will benefit.

AP Photos/Kathy Williams

The league will be Stern-less for the first time since the 1960’s starting February 1^st, 2014 but won’t be without his mark. Stern has named his successor to be his Deputy Adam Silver and it remains to be seen if this is going to be a new direction for the league or if this is going to be a shadow government where Stern is telling Silver what to do from his home in New York. Stern has done some great things for the NBA, has seen revenue go through the roof and in turn seen players salaries go through the roof but in the past 5 years or so we have only seen what seems to be the beginning of stern setting fire to the streets of Rome. Hopefully Stern putting Silver in charge will not yield the same punishing and horrid collapse that history saw when Emperor Caligula allegedly put his horse in charge as the protector of Rome as he watched the fire spread from rooftop to rooftop.